Keith Rankin has
prepared a thoughtful rebuttal to my sceptical piece on
politics as a 'perfect' market.

To deal with the least
important issue of this worthy debate, Mr Rankin accuses me
of opening with an ad hominem attack upon him. The ad
hominem is an attack of a personal nature designed to
undermine the value of the recipient's argument by calling
attention to some unrelated personal attribute. "My
opponent cannot talk knowledgeably about this subject
because she is not a mother" is an example.

I have
considered as to whether Mr Rankin has legitimate cause for
affront or perhaps was merely reacting to my undisguised
clarity of opinion. On balance I think the description of
his original essay as a 'silly little tirade' quickly
delivers to the reader the context for my opinion that the
piece was ill considered and absolutist.

In support of
this I would draw attention to some of Mr. Rankin's original
characterisations such as Mr. Graeme Hunt as an "...anti-MMP
fanatic..." This he may or may not be, but surely only in
the same sense that Mr Rankin could be described as a
pro-MMP fanatic. Further, Mr. Hunt's book on the subject
is "...riddled with factual errors." Or the logical
implication that Mr Stuart Marshall is either ignorant or a
lunatic as it is apparently "...beyond comprehension that an
orthodox economist could be opposed to polypoly..."

If I
have engaged in ad hominem then I am in good company and,
from a classical definition in particular, certainly the
student at the foot of the master!

To the meat of the
matter.

At the risk of boring the readers with a bout of
scholasticism, I am somewhat at a loss to understand how he
has characterised my argument as one of comparing Hunt,
Marshall and Robinson to Hitler and accept unconditionally
that he did not imply that. I am a little suspicious
though, that his argument on the matter is an attempt at
deflection from my central theme.

Any thinking individual
could clearly see that the thrust of Mr Rankin's argument
was that majority support (say of an electoral change
reversal) should not magically deliver up that change if it
is 'anti-democratic'. After arguing for his political
polypoly (or MMP conveniently sidestepping the 5% thorn in
the original essay) Mr Rankin concludes:

"Once achieved,
political polypoly - the competitive political marketplace -
needs to be protected from the interests that prefer
political monopoly or duopoly."

"If Adolf Hitler had run
referendums on the holocaust or the burning of Parliament,
and a majority of the German people had supported those
referendums, would that in itself have justified those two
atrocities?"

"There are still some people who think that
the earth is flat. Let's put that issue to a binding
referendum? That's democracy. Isn't it?"

My contention is
that that these lines are appeals to emotion and are used
only to link the rightful 'horror' of Nazi abuse or distain
for flat earth stupidity with what is perhaps thinking
opposition to the merits of MMP or 'perfectly' proportional
voting systems.

It is done with the sole intent of
discrediting or demonising those who hold such views and it
is an unworthy debating tactic.

In his Rejoinder Mr.
Rankin takes the more reasonable line that "(t)he
anti-democratic misdeeds of the NZ
anti-proportional-representation lobby are of a much milder
nature". Leaving aside the unproven and value loaded nature
of the statement as a whole, if these misdeeds are much
milder, why reel out the heavy guns?

His argument that
similar comparisons were made in renaissance/enlightenment
scholarship to classical antiquity is specious in that at
least a millennium separated those periods, whereas there
are still veteran's of Nazi atrocity alive today. The
period still looms large in the collective conscious.

To
some small matters.

I apologise for woefully inept attempt
at ecumenical satire in describing economists and it would
be unreasonable for me to expect any mercy from my
protagonist. He did not disappoint.

Mr Rankin also makes
the point that it is somewhat unreasonable to expect him to
demonstrate in 900 words or less the extent of his reading
on these complex subjects. I would like to be able to claim
that my comment in this regard was a plea for some balance.
Regrettably though I suspect that I read the phrase "x seems
unaware of the vast body of literature on y ..." and thought
I might try it out. Point well taken.

He is of course
wrong that I don't have perfect knowledge (except in matters
of spelling).

I apologise to readers and Mr. Rankin by
stopping here at the conclusion of my rebuttal and failing
to advance the argument further. I fear, however, that with
the quality of Mr Rankin's debate much improved (as
demonstrated in his Rejoinder) by having a whetstone on
which to sharpen his sword, I should surrender the field
before I am comprehensively outflanked.

Scoop is NZ's largest independent news source; respected widely in media, political, business and academic circles for being the place on the internet for publishing "what was really said", and for the quality of its analysis of issues.

Contact Scoop

Joseph Cederwall: The corporate media sector seems unable to do anything to halt the raging dumpster fire of consolidation, layoffs and centralisation of content production. All this means we are increasingly seeing ‘news deserts’ appearing in local communities. Illustration by Paul Sahre.More>>

To the extent that solutions exist, they must be solutions that allow journalism to move outside of the broken system that has caused this situation. For this reason, a resurgence in more engaged and community focused local journalism offers hope for a way out of this situation. More>>

ALSO:

It is quite typical for Israeli politicians to carry out confrontational measures against Palestinians shortly before general elections are due. The nature of these measures is determined by the kind of political constituency that Israeli leaders aim to appease. More>>